Fox Attacks

In Vermont, a rabid fox attacked a boy and his ax-wielding parents. The Bennington Banner tells more:

Eight-year-old Rimmele Wood was playing in his family’s yard when the fox appeared and bit him on the leg on July 11, according to his father, Ned Wood. The fox "latched onto" the boy’s leg, he said, and was not letting go.

Ned Wood said he was able to kill the fox with an ax and free his son. "My wife brought me the ax and I dispatched it rather quickly," he said.

Dr. Robert Johnson, the state’s public health veterinarian, said the attack was the sixth rabid gray fox bite of a person this year in Vermont. The state typically sees just a "handful" each year, he said, but the high rate this year is not alarming, he said.

In other fox news, people have asked me about the recent attack on twin babies in the UK. Most fox attacks are, like the one in Vermont, the result of rabies. But the UK incident was clearly a predatory attack. Babies are small enough to fall within the acceptable size range for fox prey. In my files I have other cases of foxes sneaking into homes on food raids, but pet cats are the usual victims.